Robbie Swinnerton serves up morsels from the foodiest city on the planet

sashimi

02/06/2015

Is there any food more comforting and satisfying than a nabe? Sitting around a bubbling casserole watching your dinner cook satisfies all the senses, nourishing the soul as you fill and heat your body. So why aren’t there more places like Nabeya?

This old-time gem lies hidden away in the dingy, seen-better-days back streets of Otsuka, on the northernmost section of Tokyo's Yamanote loop line.

Chef Hiroshi Fukuda helped his father set up the restaurant in the hard-scrabble years following World War Two. Serving nabe hot pots was one of the simplest, most nutritious styles of cooking. The restaurant premises have been through a couple of incarnations since then – until the late 1980s, it was a wonderful old two-story wooden house; now Nabeya occupies the bottom two floors of a condominium building – but the style of cuisine remains unchanged.

Fukuda is 79 now and still hale and spry. Over the years he has become an authority on the traditional food culture of Tokyo, with books to his name about the way people used to eat in the days when the city was still called Edo and was ruled by shoguns.

He runs Nabeya with his wife, who greets you at the entrance, waits as you climb out of your shoes, and then shows you to your private room.

There are just four chambers, all traditional in style with tatami mats, shoji screens over the windows, timber beams and some beautiful scrolls and wall hangings. The largest of the upstairs rooms is the most impressive.

If you (or your knees) are not that thrilled about sitting at a low table, there are two alternatives. The room on the ground floor is equipped with horigotatsu-style seating (a table with a leg-well) for parties of four to six.

If there are just two of you (or four smallish people), the room you are likely to be assigned is the smallest one (upstairs), which has a proper table and chairs (on the tatami).

As the name proclaims, Nabeya serves only one kind of food – just the way it has done ever since it opened: nabe hot pots, cooked at the table in front of you.

Basically, the classic wintertime dish is a superlative chicken/seafood/ vegetable hot pot. Other places would just call this yose (mixed). But here it's been given a more poetic name: Horai-nabe, after a mountain of Buddhist legend.

It's a fixed (and fixed-price) menu, shared by everyone at the table. If you want to make adjustments to the ingredients, the time to do that is when you phone to reserve.

The meal always opens with a tray of simple zensai (appetisers). This is what we were served early this winter:

The sashimi (back right) will change with the season: it's saba (mackerel) here. And so will the aemono (dressed vegetables; back left). There will also be a small serving of tsukudani relish (in the center): in this case it's iwa-nori seaweed.

But the dishes at the front stay the same year-round: tamago-yaki omelet; and a couple of dried urume-iwashi (sardines), which are very simple but full of umami, and nice to chew on while sipping on beer or sake.

Here's another zensai tray, this one served earlier last autumn…

While you're nibbling into this, preferably with a flask of sake at hand, your nabe is being readied. The casserole itself contains a special dashi stock made from katsuobushi (bonito flakes) but, unusually, using no kombu (kelp).

Fukuda says this is the way it was done in the old days, when traders in Osaka monopolised the kombu trade from Hokkaido, leaving little for the folks in Edo. There's another reason: kombu tends to make the dashi cloudy; without it the colour is a clear, golden brown.

These will include salmon, cod, hamaguri clams, a good variety of vegetables, chicken, tofu, soft-boiled quail’s eggs, noodles and mushrooms, along with a couple of saimaki-ebi – young kuruma-ebi (king prawns) – so fresh they are still quivering.

When it's been brought up to heat, that's the time for the ingredients to be carefully placed into it, a little at a time.

Not that you need to do the actual cooking. This is handled by your waitress. She places the ingredients expertly into the bubbling broth and then, with equal deftness, ladles them onto your plate when they are cooked.

The saimaki-ebi are one of the highlights. But everything tastes good when you're watching and smelling your dinner cooking.

Mrs. Fukuda will also look in from time to time, to check on things and attend to the final stages of the nabe.

You will have already eaten the udon noodles that came with all the other ingredients. Now it's time for ojiya – rice cooked down in the last of the broth with a beaten egg until it forms a rich porridge.

This is rib-sticking, stomach-filling, bulking-up fare, expressly designed to fill the last remaining stomach space. You will not leave Nabeya feeling hungry. In the slightest.

A light dessert is served to close the meal. Usually it will be just a sliver or two of fruit, such as this beautifully ripe persimmon that had been lightly seared to blister its skin – as much for appearance as flavour.

Sometimes, though, Fukuda gets creative and comes up with his own ideas. The last time we were there, he also produced a dessert that looked spectacular – in fact, almost molecular in appearance. Tofu encased in an angular layer of clear kanten jelly, served with a thick sweet kuro-mitsu (raw sugar) syrup.

In terms of flavour, the tofu was too pronounced, and the kanten too bland. But it was so good to look at. And it slipped down beautifully…

Finally it is time to settle up – at ¥15,000 per head, plus incidentals, it's always more than you expect, especially as you are asked to pay in banknotes (rather than plastic) – and then make your way out into the night. Returning slowly to the 21st century from this little time warp that feels as though it is stuck forever in the postwar Showa years.

11/04/2014

It's taken me three years to get around to writing a full review of the excellent and very special Nakamura Shokudo. Why? Sometimes I prefer not to shine the spotlight too brightly on the places I like best.

After it opened in 2011, I gave it a brief but enthusiastic recommendation in my newspaper column. But now finally it's time to give it a full write-up in The Japan Times. It really is too good to keep to myself.

So here are a few more images to whet your appetite (plus a map link down at the bottom, to get you there).

Starting with that interior. Bright, functional and not particularly atmospheric – that's one reason they call themselves a shokudo ("canteen")…

A nibble with some sake to get going. This is yama-imo sengiri – tororo yam cut into fine slivers and served with nori and a light dressing (plus wasabi):

Then a plate of mixed sashimi — plus a different sake (this one is Hakurakusei, one of my perennial favourites)…

Next up: shioyaki sanma – saury lightly salted and grilled whole. The fish of this season – the three kanji characters of its name 秋刀魚 literally mean "autumn" "sword" "fish" — it is the perfect plebeian pleasure. More Hakurakusei with that!

Followed by a stir-fry of kara-age chicken with mixed vegetables and shiitake, with a Chinese black-vinegar dressing – we're veering away from strictly Japanese territory here…

And then way out to cross-cultural left-field with spam katsu, a breaded, deep-fried cutlet of spam with a thick layer of eggy mashed potato in the center. Served in proper style with a mound of raw grated cabbage and a bottle of Bull-Dog sauce to annoint it with. [NB on the (Japanese) menu this is actually called Ham Katsu Korokke (ハムカツコロッケ)]

Yes, the food is great – excellent, wholesome quality at very affordable prices – but what makes Nakamura Shokudo really so buzzy and warm are the staff. If you're sitting at the right end of the counter looking into the kitchen, then Saito-san will take good care of you (and may even pose for a photo at the end!)

Nakamura Shokudo is a bit of a walk from Akasaka Station, in the direction of Nogizaka, and very easy to miss. Here's a map link…

One caveat: although they are open daily, Nakamura Shokudo is sometimes taken over for the evening by private parties, especially around New Year. It's highly advisable to check their website (or phone ahead) before going.

03/26/2014

That was the culmination of the mori-awase mixed sashimi platter at Ajisen in Tsukishima.

Premium seafood. Great sake. So downhome-shitamachi local. And so excellent. Especially in such good company!

Here are a few more images. Starting with another take on that wonderful uni…

A mound of nama-shirasu (fresh-caught sardine fry) simply served with ginger and fine-chopped negi scallions. In the back, the otoshi (obligatory opening nibble): home-made shiokara, so rich with umami on the tastebuds it propelled us straight to ordering lots of good sake.

Anago no shirayaki – a filleted conger eel, grilled without being basted with sauce. Served with sudachi citron and wasabi to go in a shoyu dip. Simple and excellent.

It's not all seafood at Ajisen: the tempura is always worth ordering, especially if it features morokko-ingen ("Moroccan" green beans) and maitake mushrooms.

Only Japanese is spoken, and there's no English on the menu. Smoking is allowed. The stairs down are steep, and the door at the bottom is formidable – only the bottom half of it opens, so you have to crouch down to slide it open and get through. And then you gesticulate from that position of supplication to find out whether they have any free seats.

And before that, of course, you have to actually find it. Which is hard, even if you know where it is on the map, and even though it is only minutes away from Shibuya's busy stations and seething shopping streets. [I've put some hints and a map link down at the bottom of this post].

But if you like your sake and are keen to find plenty of non-mainstream brews, Maishin is certainly worth seeking out. And, as at so many other sake-specialists – including the other places in the Nozaki group – the food is really quite good. Here are some of the standards and standouts.

The ankimo (monkfish liver) is good, and so are the ebi shinjo and the buri teriyaki. And the sashimi is certainly of superior izakaya quality…

And then there are the crossover dishes. That's where things get a bit interesting.

Starting with the buta-no-kakuni paizutsumi: a chunk of pork belly that has been slow simmered to cook it, then wrapped in pastry casing and baked in the oven. Instead of being simply plated with a blob of yellow karashi mustard on the side (as kakuni would be usually), it's given a delicate tracing of mustard in the savoury dashi/pork gravy. Ace.

And then there is the house-special wagyu/foie gras steak, which comes with a colourful selection of organically-grown root vegetables and liberal swooshes of balsamico sauce.

But it really is all about the sake. The fridges are bulging with premium brews from all around the country, with Denshu (Aomori) especially well represented on the menu.

And where Maishin really scores is with its special brews, limited editions, competition brews and seasonal rarities. The menu lists a lot of them. But it's easier just to ask manager Takeuchi-san.

That's a 3-year aged junmai-daiginjo from Enseki (Kagawa) on the left; a red sparkling sake from Kyokuko (Tochigi); and a kimoto from Soga Pere et Fils (Nagano). The Kyokuko really hit the spot.

The place to sit (if you're solo or there are just two of you) is at the central counter. Besides getting a ringside view of the main sake fridge, you also get to converse with Takeuchi-san. He's a major sake buff, who used to be in charge at Nozaki Sakaten in Shinbashi.

• Maishin – 米心 in Japanese – means "rice heart". It's a name that resonates on several levels.

• The photo at the very top of this post showing the interior was taken in bonenkai season: in fact the usual demographic at Maishin is considerably younger and hipper.

• Although Maishin does not have a no-smoking policy, the ceiling is high enough and the extractor fans strong enough that this has never been a major problem for me.

• As mentioned, the entrance to Maishin is not easy to find, as the stairs are well set back from the street. Look for the NTT Docomo store on the left side as you make your way up the Dogenzaka main drag. Then, right next door, look for the sake bottles, the sign and the sugidama over the stairs.